More Brazilian Cyberpolitics

“Brazil’s largest newspaper sues independent blog and begins a new era of censorship

“An unprecedented lawsuit is being concealed by Brazilian media – which is still in the hands of a few – and may mark the beginning of a dangerous reality for bloggers around the country

“As we saw during Obama’s election and in others all over Europe, the internet also developed an important role during the 2010 presidential campaign in Brazil, which culminated in the election of President Lula’s candidate Dilma Roussef. While most blogs gave support to left-wing candidate Roussef, (((you can tell these are bloggers rather than journalists, because they can’t spell the name of Brazil’s president-elect properly)) most TV networks, radios, newspapers and magazines took the side of José Serra and his strong political-religious-didactic conservative coalition (who ended up losing the election). If there were any questions about the importance of the internet in Brazil, it is undeniable as of November 24th 2009, when Lula gave, to blogs only, the first online interview in the history of the Brazilian presidency, in a demonstration of respect for the important contrast that they had created against the traditional press.

“While all of this was going on, a new blog called “Falha de S. Paulo” was created last September. The blog was a parody of Brazil’s biggest newspaper company: Folha de S. Paulo. In Portuguese, “Folha” is similar to the English word for “Journal”. And “Folha” sounds almost like “Falha”, which in Portuguese means “failure”. The blog published photomontages and jokes, full of strong – yet good-humored – criticism against the biased articles published daily by Folha de S. Paulo. As an example, one of the most successful and ironic photomontages showed the face of Otavio Frias Filho – the owner of the newspaper – over the body of Darth Vader. (((You gotta like the science-fiction angle of the brouhaha here.)))

“It did not take more than a month for Folha de S. Paulo to go to court demanding the censorship of the satirical blog. Unbelievably, that was exactly what happened. And it got worse: the newspaper also began an 88-page lawsuit against the creators of blog, asking for a financial compensation for moral damages….” (((After that they go into the details, which are pretty good.)))

*More on the Brazilian blogging scandal which ought be be called “DarthVaderGate,” but, sadly, isn’t:

In late September, the satirical website Falha de São Paulo was removed from the web by an injunction in the Brazilian courts.

The site’s purpose was to satirize newspaper Folha de São Paulo – the biggest in Brazil. It posted mocking montages [pt] of the newspaper, fake and ironic headlines, and set up a “generator of headlines” [pt] using the Folha layout [The current generator is not authored by the creators of the Falha de São Paulo website, but made by anonymous – GV note]. (((Everybody can depend on good old “anonymous” to avenge them these days, which is not entirely an unalloyed good thing, as my next post will show.)))

(…)

“Folha’s attorney , Taís Gasparian, claimed that the newspaper did not want to censor the site but only to prevent misuse of Folha de S. Paulo trademark….”
(…)

“A Tumblr account was created [pt] at the time by anonymous (((there Anonymous is again; good thing he lacks an address and can’t receive subpoenas))) bloggers to rescue Falha’s posts. The blog Desculpe a Nossa Falha [Forgive our Failure, pt] was also created by the Bocchini brothers to update readers on, and garner support for their international campaign promoting freedom of expression. The brothers translated explanatory texts in various languages in search of support and visibility amongst bloggers and the international media against the censorship imposed on them. (((Not that internationality ought to be all that hard to find nowadays.)))

“Most recently, on December 15, a justice court of the state of São Paulo denied [pt] the application for suspension of the injunction against Falha, with the statement of one of the judges present at the trial resembling that of the newspaper, in which the website was labelled a “blatant case of parasitic competition”…